This topic describes how to write an Microsoft Azure solution listener application that can read and process Microsoft Dynamics 365 messages that are posted to the Microsoft Azure Service Bus. As a prerequisite, you should familiarize yourself with how to write a Microsoft Azure Service Bus listener before trying to learn the specifics of a Microsoft Dynamics 365 listener. For more information, see the Azure Service Bus documentation.

A message queue is a repository of messages received at a service bus endpoint. A queue listener is an application that reads and processes these queued messages. Because the service bus messages are stored in a queue, a listener doesn’t have to be actively listening for messages to be received in the queue. A queue listener can be started after messages have arrived in the queue and still process those messages. Other types of listeners discussed in the next section must be actively listening or they will miss the opportunity to read a message. These messages can originate from Microsoft Dynamics 365 or from some other source. .

Important

When writing a queue listener, check each message header action to determine if the message originated from Microsoft Dynamics 365. For information on how to do this see Filter messages.

You can do a destructive message read using Receive in ReceiveAndDelete mode, where the message is read and removed from the queue, or a non-destructive read using PeekLock mode, where the message is read but still available in the queue. The persistent queue listener sample code provided in this SDK does a destructive read. For more information about reading messages from a queue, see How to Receive Messages from a Queue.

A topic is similar to a queue but implements a publish/subscribe model. One or more listeners can subscribe to the topic and receive messages from its queue. More information: Queues, Topics, and Subscriptions

Important

To use these queue or topic contracts, you must write your listener applications using the Azure SDK version 1.7 or higher.

Use of queues and topics in your multisystem software design can result in the decoupling of systems. If the listener application ever becomes unavailable, the message delivery from Microsoft Dynamics 365 will still succeed and the listener application can continue processing the queue message when it is back online. More information: Queues, Topics, and Subscriptions

In addition to the queue listener described previously, you can write a listener for three other service bus contracts that are supported by Microsoft Dynamics 365: one-way, two-way, and REST. A one-way listener can read and process a message posted to the service bus. A two-way listener can do the same but can also return a string of some information back to Dynamics 365. A REST listener is the same as the two-way listener except that it works with a REST endpoint. Notice that these listeners must be actively listening at a service endpoint to read a message sent over the service bus. If the listener isn’t listening when Microsoft Dynamics 365 attempts to post a message to the service bus, the message doesn’t get sent.

Writing a listener is structured around what is known as ABC: address, binding, and contract. The following information identifies the ABCs of a one-way listener.

After your listener is registered with an endpoint, the listener’s Execute method is invoked whenever a message is posted to the service bus by Microsoft Dynamics 365. The Execute method doesn’t return any data from the method call. For more information, see the one-way listener sample, Sample: One-way listener.

A two-way listener is coded in a similar fashion as a one-way listener. The ABCs of a two-way listener are as follows:

For the REST contract, the Execute method returns a string from the method call. Refer to the REST listener sample, Sample: REST listener, for more information. Notice that in the REST listener sample, a WebServiceHost is instantiated and not a ServiceHost as was done in the two-way sample.

Note

When using the out-of-box (ServiceBusPlugin) plug-in with a two-way or REST listener, the plug-in doesn’t use any string data returned from the listener. However, a custom Azure-aware plug-in could make use of this information.

When you run the listener samples, the issuer secret you’re prompted for is the Microsoft Azure Service Bus management key. The WS2007 Federation HTTP binding uses “token” mode and the WS-Trust 1.3 protocol.

There is a property bag of extra information added to each brokered message Properties property sent from Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Dynamics 365 (online). The property bag, available with queue, relay, and topic contract endpoints, contains the following information:

Organization URI

Calling user ID

Initiating user ID

Entity logical name

Request name

This information identifies the organization, user, entity, and message request being processed by Microsoft Dynamics 365 that resulted in the service bus message being posted. The availability of these properties indicates that the message was sent from Microsoft Dynamics 365. Your listener code can decide how to process the message based on these values.

The data context from the current Microsoft Dynamics 365 operation is passed to your Azure solution listener application in the body of a service bus message. In previous releases, only a .NET binary format was supported. For cross-platform (non-.NET) interoperability, you can now specify one of three data formats for the message body: .NET Binary, JSON, or XML. This format is specified in the MessageFormat attribute of the ServiceEndpoint entity.